Is it easier for
you to recognize the shape of a chair or the shape of Zimbabwe? Are
you more likely to remember the locations of rooms in a building
or the locations of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa? If your answers
are "chair" and "rooms in a building," you may
be interested in the Geography Learning Project.

This project explores the idea of having
the campus of Stony Brook University represent the world as an aid
in learning global geography. A map of the world is superimposed on
the buildings and landscapes of the university, so that in one's imagination,
real campus places come to represent world regions, countries, cities,
mountain ranges, deserts, rivers and oceans. As a result, students
and others who become familiar with the campus can become familiar
with the globe, developing physical connections to, and lasting memories
of, the details of global geography.

The Geography Learning Project grew out
of a meeting between Professor Schäfer and myself, as we discussed
an original map that I had made, entitled "The Stony Brook Union
Building as Europe, a Geography Learning Aid." We decided that
I should continue mapping the rest of the world on floor plans of other
Stony Brook buildings and we would make them available through the
website of the Center for Global History.

I created that first map as a step toward
achieving a specific goal that brought me back to college after working
in finance for over 20 years. That goal is to change how students study,
to enable them to remember history and geography for a lifetime. Through
exploration in my spare time from 1998 to 2003, I had discovered that
one could remember history and geography by practicing the "places
and images" technique of the ancient art of memory. I am currently
using this technique in my own study of history.

My path to discovery began at the dining
room table, the place where I helped my daughters prepare for social
studies tests in middle school, and where I realized that I had forgotten
almost all of the history and geography I had ever learned. That experience
led me to try to invent ways to remember history and geography. After
many informal experiments, I discovered that imagining people and objects
interacting with the features of my back yard produced the strongest
memories. I thought I had invented something new, never having heard
of such a thing. But in fact I had stumbled upon the art of memory,
which was invented in Greece in the fifth century BC and was used in
learning for hundreds of years.

The Geography Learning Project employs
the method of loci by associating images of geography with Stony Brook
campus places. I hope that this project will help Stony Brook students
to learn global geography. If you know of anyone who is currently applying
the method of loci in education at any level, in any discipline, please contact
me.